Earlier this year, Oliver Chang, a former Morgan Stanley analyst, turned a few heads when he quit his job as the bank’s head of U.S. housing strategy to form his own company to invest in single-family rental housing.

The move came a year after Mr. Chang had produced a widely read report, “A Rentership Society,” that read to many like a manifesto, arguing that large institutional investors should back the strategy of buying homes, fixing them up and renting them.

Mr. Chang, when he started his own investment firm, Sylvan Road Capital, which owns between 200 and 500 homes in the Atlanta area, was seen as a rare example of an analyst putting his money where his mouth is — or in this case, putting money from private-equity investor the Carlyle Group into a much-talked about investment strategy. A Journal article from October reported that Mr. Chang has a $20 million commitment from Carlyle, which could grow larger. Read More »